How to be simultaneously modest about one’s achievements without blowing your own trumpet.
For me, it was that switch from Civil Servant to NME freelance, 1976 (hard to believe I was a “hip young gunslinger”). Then on to Melody Maker staff writer (1980/82). For 40 years I’ve been doing the freelance boogie – Evening Standard, Guardian, The Observer, Heat, staff at Vox, The Times, Mojo, Record Collector…
Books came courtesy of my old friend Peter Hogan who commissioned me to write my first title, a History Of Fairport Convention back in 1982. How different things were back then; at the Eel Pie Christmas party another publisher asked if I was working on anything else, I said I was always surprised there hadn't been a biography of Simon & Garfunkel. "Do you want to write one then?"
I’ve been a South East London resident all my life, apart from a year in 1960 which took my Dad’s job to Scotland. These days when I'm out and about I tend to be whizzing in my electric wheelchair, it is a lot easier than my manual one. I call it 'Judas', Bob fans will see the relevance.
Next on the radar…? I'm toying with a Memoir of my life as a cancer survivor, a gloomy return to the very different 1960s, but still, God bless the NHS, without it you wouldn't be reading this. For light relief I am planning to incorporate highlights (going to a baseball match with Art Garfunkel at Shea Stadium) and low points (presciently reviewing Depeche Mode's debut single Just Can't Get Enough ("I can. You will") of my career as a journalist